The aim of this research is to examine, from a linguistic perspective, how the media portrayed Kurdistan during September 25, 2017, Kurdistan Referendum.

1. Media Representation of Kurdistan: Linguistic Analysis
Faculty of Humanities Applied linguistics and
Text Analytics
Nizhny Novgorod, 2022
Scientific Supervisor:
M. A. Klimova
Associate Professor
School of Applied Linguistics and Foreign Languages
Mahmood Othman Mahmood

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Faculty of Humanities Outline
Introduction
Literature Review
Research Methodology
Results
Conclusion and Recommendations
References

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Faculty of Humanities Introduction Research Aims and Objectives, Research
Question and Significance of the Research
 Aims of the Study:
• The aim of this research is to examine, from a linguistic perspective, how the media portrayed Kurdistan
during September 25, 2017, Kurdistan Referendum.
 Objective of Study:
• To collect data from different news sites around the world.
• To create a corpus of news sites' articles.
• To show how Kurdistan is represented in the news media articles.
 Research Question:
• What was the reflection of the news about the Kurdistan referendum.
• How are linguistic features employed to represent Kurdistan in the media?
 Significance of the Research:
• To help readers grasp the linguistic style utilized by the media.
• To help Kurdish speakers comprehend how they are portrayed in the media.

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Faculty of Humanities Literature Review Theoretical and Methodological Bases
 Corpus Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis
• The method of critical discourse analysis (CDA) has
been shown to be successful in the study of media
discourse (Fairclough, 1995).
• Baker (2010) has begun to propose for an integrated
strategy that combines corpus linguistics and critical
discourse analysis, as well as an interaction between
quantitative and qualitative methodologies.
 Representation Theory
• Stuart Hall (1997) summarized three approaches
to understanding the representation process.
1. Reflexive theories: the function of language,
like a mirror, reflects the correct meaning and
exactly corresponds to the universe.
2. Deliberate theories: In this approach, "words"
carry with them the meaning that the author
really intends to convey.
3. Constructive theories: Based on this approach,
we construct meanings by organizing signs into
system.
 The Concept of Framework
• Framework assumes that how a topic and event is
described in news reports affects how the
audience understands that subject and event.
(Scheufele and Tewksbury, 2007)

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 combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.
 The first phase of the study is quantitative, the acquired
data run through Antconc corpus tools.
 The second portion of the study is qualitative, and critical
discourse analysis used to process articles that discuss
topics both broadly and contextually.
 The Study Corpus
 The corpus consists of 30 news articles.
 The corpus as a whole consists of 16375 tokens
and 2592 types.
Faculty of Humanities Research Methodology Methods and Material
 Research Approach  The Corpus Toolkit
 The computer software tool "AntConc" is used in
corpus linguistics for concordance and text
analysis.
1. Main task is to generate concordance
(KWIC).
2. Look for certain lexical and syntactic
structures and collect data on how often they
occur

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Faculty of Humanities Research Methodology Data Collection and Data Analysis
 Data Collection
Top five lexical frequency lists of the corpora were
generated.
the word “referendum” was entered in the
concordance of AntConc.
lexical words that associated with lexeme
“Referendum” carried out in more depth
Some linguistic features analyzed
News sites Country Number of articles
BBC News UK 5
CNN USA 5
Sky News UK 5
Fox News USA 5
Al Jazeera Qatar 5
Rudaw KRI 5
Total 6 30
 Data Analysis

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Results Achieved (1) Results of the lexical frequency analysis
 Top five content lexemes in the Corpus
Rank Keyword Frequency BBC News CNN Sky News Fox News Al Jazeera Rudaw
1
Kurdish 235 (27) 11% (39) 17% (33) 14% (38) 16% (51) 22% (47) 20%
2
referendum 194 (30) 15% (44) 23% (14) 7% (25) 13% (36) 19% (45) 23%
3
Kurds 112 (24) 21% (18) 16% (20) 18% (20) 18% (15) 13% (15) 13%
4
Kurdistan 105 (22) 21% (15) 14% (9) 9% (0) 0% 15() 14% (44) 42%
5
independence 92 (13) 14% (21) 23% (10) 11% (11) 12% (17) 18% (20) 22%
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Results Achieved (2) Results of the concordance lines (KWIC)
 Negative and Positive lexical words associated with
Kurdistan Referendum
Faculty of Humanities
Lexical
words
Frequency BBC News CNN Sky News Fox News Al Jazeera Rudaw
violence 14 - 5 3 3 1 2
threat 7 2 1 2 - 2 -
mistake 5 1 3 1 - -
distracting 4 - 3 - - 1 -
danger 3 1 - 2 - - -
inalienable 2 - - - - - 2

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Results Achieved (3) Further interpretation of key KWIC
 Collocation analysis of “referendum” in the corpus
Faculty of Humanities

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Results Achieved (4) Further interpretation of key KWIC
 Collocation analysis of “referendum” in the corpus
Faculty of Humanities
• Kurdistan referendum is a violence
The statement from "Sky News," a British news
organization, plainly identified that the Kurdish
referendum would lead to violence.
Kurdish independence referendum in Iraq
fuels violence fears, the US and Britain
are both opposed to the "destabilizing" vote,
arguing it distracts from the fight against
Islamic State. (Sky News)
• Kurdistan referendum is a mistake
The referendum is a mistake and could detract
from the essential campaign of defeating Daesh
(ISIS)," the UK's Defence Secretary Fallon told
reporters in Baghdad last Monday. (CNN)
The author uses the adjective "essential" to emphasize
that conducting the referendum at this crucial moment is
a mistake, as opposed to focusing the Kurdish and Iraqi
governments on defeating Daesh (ISIS).

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Results Achieved (5) Further interpretation of key KWIC
 Collocation analysis of “referendum” in the corpus
Faculty of Humanities
• Kurdistan referendum is an inalienable
Using two adjectives together to empower the
Kurdish people, "inalienable" and "democratic," to
underline that referendum participation and conduct
is a fundamental right of Kurdish. By using the
active voice and direct communication, the author
attempting to convince the audience that the
referendum is the only way to acquire your right and
establish a state.
• Final Results
The findings demonstrate that Western media outlets
in the United Kingdom and the United States,
including BBC News, CNN, Fox News, and Sky
News, portrayed the Kurdistan submission in a
negative light. On the other hand, Rudaw's position as
a local media outlet from Iraq's Kurdistan Region was
entirely positive
Participation in the referendum is an
inalienable democratic right; it is the public
display of the Kurdish will; the referendum is
the voice of the century old Kurdish liberation
movement to exercise the long denied right to
self-determination against borders that have
crossed them. (Rudaw)

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Conclusion
 The news media have distinct preferences for positive and negative
word selections.
 The news media selects specific words and phrases to describe
Kurdistan referendum.
 The western media, as expected, concentrate on the negative premise of
conducting Kurdistan referendum unfavorably.
 The local media supports the referendum and utilizes positive language.
Conclusion
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Recommendations Where do we go from here?
 Kurdish people are often not aware of the negative impact of western media.
• Need for more awareness-raising
• Definite association between language patterns
• Closer link between people and media
 Key recommandation for further research
• the findings of this study provide methodological relevance for future critical discourse
analysis on news articles.
• The current study's findings have methodological implications for future studies on media
representation that use a quantitative methodology.
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References
• Ali, Q. (2018). The representation of Kurds in the Islamic state‫׳‬s media: ‫׳‬Dabiq ‫׳‬magazine as an example. Kurdistan
Conflict and Crisis Research Centre, (Vol. 8).
• Baker P (2010) Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London: Arnold.
• Hill and James Watson. (2006). and Media of Dictionary Studies Communication, Publication Arnold Hodder, Edition 7
• McEnery, T., & Hardie, A. (2012). Corpus linguistics: Method, theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
• Scheufele, DA. Tewksbury D. (2007). Framing agenda setting and priming: The Evolution of three media effects
models. Journal of communication, volume 57: 9-20.
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